Ben Adler

Ben Adler writes on national politics and domestic policy. Ben has been a staff writer for Politico and an editor at Newsweek and the Center for American Progress. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Columbia Journalism Review, Salon, The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, The Guardian and Next American City among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Recent Articles

KENNEDY ON COLLEGE LOANS: Yesterday afternoon I participated in a blogger conference call with Senator Ted Kennedy about the soon to be passed Higher Education Access Act (HEAA). The bill will give an additional $20 billion in financial aid to students without costing taxpayers a penny by cutting excessive lender subsidies. That's the good news. The bad news is that an even stronger proposal, Student Aid Reward Act (STAR) stands no chance of passing, and Senator Kennedy was very frank as to why, saying, "Lenders are too powerful in the U.S. Senate -- I’m sorry to say, among Democrats as well as Republicans -- for that to get passed." STAR would create an incentive for universities to cut lenders and their wasteful government subsidies out of the program altogether by encouraging schools to switch to direct lending, in which the federal government provides the loans itself. So students and taxpayers will see a small improvement when the HEAA is passed, but will continue waiting...

THE RELEVANCE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: Over at The Plank Jason Zengerle acknowledges that the question of Barack Obama 's experience is a canard but goes on to criticize Obama's mention of his experience teaching constitutional law in describing his career in public service. Zengerle says, I don't think it quite qualifies as public service ... It reminds me a bit of when I applied for journalism jobs after college and my resume was so thin that I felt compelled to include my stint as a pizza deliverer. No offense to the pizza deliverers out there but I hardly think that's the same as teaching constitutional law -- at the University Chicago no less. One could reasonably argue about whether professors are public servants or not. (Strictly speaking only elected officials are public servants, but Zengerle takes no exception to Obama's listing his community organizing experience as public service, and aren't educating and mobilizing the public just two sides of the same coin?) But I don't...

LIBERTARIANS AND FALSE EQUIVALENCE. In my review of The Simpsons Movie for The Guardian , I mentioned the libertarian impulse to falsely equate the harmless foibles of liberals with the nefarious proclivities of conservatives. As if to prove that point Michael C. Moynihan , a blogger for Reason , opines in response that the main argument of my piece, (that liberal Simpsons fans should be forewarned that though the movie is funny and worth-seeing it has a streak of politically conservative humor) makes me the equivalent Brent Bozell . Having actually covered Bozell's shenanigans I seriously resent the comparison. Bozell, like most conservative media watchdogs, does much more than write light-hearted columns gently critiquing a little political message he does not support. Bozell leads campaigns to berate corporations out of promoting content he finds offensive for political or moral reasons. As Moynihan may have noticed I didn't call for a boycott of The Simpsons movie. In fact, I...

WAR ON TERRORISTS. I'm probably going to take some serious flack from TAPPEDers for saying this, but I think the most important idea to come out of Saturday's candidate forum at Kos was Hillary Clinton 's suggestion that the War on Terrorism be re-labeled the War on Terrorists. Like so many liberals I've been frustrated by what Clinton correctly identifies as the peculiarity of fighting a war on tactic. And the shorthand "War on Terror," which technically means war on an emotion is so illogical as to be completely meaningless. I've never had quite the right alternative though. Some have suggested that after September 11th, President Bush should have simply declared war on Al-Qaeda. I think a restrained approach like that would have been acceptable, but in recent years so many Islamic jihadists groups have sprung up in the Middle East, Asia and Europe that are not explicitly part of Al-Qaeda but share its goals and methods. So I think Clinton's suggestion that we re-conceive the war as...

BUSH TO VICTIMS OF PAY DISCRIMINATION: DROP DEAD. Many progressives were shocked by the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co to interpret workplace discrimination laws so narrowly as to throw out all cases that aren't brought within 180 days of a discriminatory pay decision. This is obviously unfair because one often does not realize for some time that their raise was inadequate. Rep. George Miller (D- CA) and 31 cosponsors have introduced legislation to reverse this unjust decision. Under the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act , workers could instead bring suit within 180 days of receiving any paycheck affected by the discriminatory decision. That might sound reasonable to you but apparently it's an outrage to the White House, which announced today a statement of administration policy strongly opposing the bill. Surely they must have some serious grounds for wanting to prevent potential victims of discrimination from having their day in court right? Wrong...